Progress report

It seems the natives are getting restless, so I figured an update on my UI compilation was in order. I’m almost done with a 4.0.1 compatible version… almost.

Here’s a glimpse of what I’ve got going on now…

Garwulf Hunter UI

The reasons this has taken so long to finish:

A) My play-time has taken a shot to the jewels. In a week’s time I may only have 1-2 opportunities to get on (maybe…) – for perhaps an hour or two. It’s been that way for several weeks now. No cause for alarm… I’ve just been busy with other things.

B) I’m hoping to do something really cool with this update. I’m not only trying to streamline it further and reduce the footprint even more, but I’m also trying to add some more useful bells & whistles.

Rather than just update all of the addons and call it good, I’m looking to improve things by a noticeable amount.

The unit frames are a bit more minimalist, but are more functional now. I ditched the 3D portrait and increased the size of the focus bar, along with a few other minor tweaks.

I tightened up my Power Auras, so as to not interfere with the default Blizz auras. The in-game ones are nice, so I’m quite happy to let them live alongside the ones I’ve configured.

I’ve added a few new auras: one for Deterrence (with timer), one for Master’s Call (with timer), as well as a nifty (at least I think…) low-profile “focus EQ”. The hi-fi, volume-slider looking thingy just above the skull and crossbones (kill shot) aura is actually a small heads-up focus graph I’ve been playing with. For PvE play I mostly watch my unit frame bar for available focus, but I’ve found this little bar aura to be pretty helpful for PvP, since my eyes are typically always on what’s happening around my character. It’s a handy quick reference.

The three arcs are: Potion of Speed (orange), Rapid Fire (red) and Heroism (white). They all have accompanying timers as well.

I left my buff auras in there (the four auras w/ timers on opposite sides of the arcs), but I have them turned off in-game. However, I’ll post updated strings for them in case any of you are interested in trying them.

I took a page out of Kripp’s book and added two NTK timers for damage immunity buffs. These have been really handy for monitoring the duration of bubbles, ice blocks, deterrence, dispersion, etc… They are situated above the enemy cast bar (not pictured).

Another thing I’ve done that’s pretty cool… configure filters for dispellable enemy buffs. I don’t have them visible in this screenshot, but I’ve set up a series of target icons which shows enemy buffs which can be Tranq’d off. I don’t have everything in there, but most all of the important ones are listed. It provides a nice visual cue as to whether you need to burn some focus on a Tranq Shot or not.

I estimate I should have this updated and uploaded within the next week. I’m just about done getting things sorted, but I want to spend some time playing with the new configurations, so as to make sure there aren’t any issues.

So… for those of you that have been chomping at the bit to get a 4.0.1 version of this, know that it’s coming soon. 🙂

26 thoughts on “Progress report”

  1. you might want to give a little love to the new haste aspect of lifeblood.
    it could deserve a little arc up in the speed, hero, rapid grouping

    Reply
  2. THANK. YOU.

    Seriously, thank you so much for putting the kind of polish and perfection into this UI Garwulf. Nothing comes close to it in my opinion, and I’ve found it very useful (with only a couple minor changes) for Bear Tanking as well as my Hunter. I know we’ve all been chomping at a bit to get our hands on the 4.0.X compliant version because we all just miss having a working version so much! I HATE playing WoW without this UI, it just doesn’t feel clean enough without it. So…

    THANK. YOU.

    Reply
    • I know everyone’s probably getting tired of hearing this, and just want to see results, but I’m just about ready to upload a new version.

      Time is my enemy, but know that any free bits of it that I’ve had have gone into working on this. It’ll be up this week.

      Reply
  3. The thing that first attracted me to your mod comp is that you use a lot of the same mods I currently use, but the way in which you configured them is brilliant for minimal eye movement, such as the placement of unit frames, power auras, etc. The big thing is, from the screen shots I’ve seen, it looks clean/lean, and that’s the most important factor to me moving back to the Hunter.

    Though this one is a bit old, you can see an example of my current setup: http://heubaum.com/ss.jpeg

    While this isn’t an optimal SS to show what things look like during a raid fight, it shows the basic raid setup/design. I feel that for a Hunter, it would be too cluttered. Since I played Holy/Ret, I did minimal movement for most fights, so that UI design worked. I don’t think it would work as well for a Hunter which requires range/motion. For Cataclysm, since I’ve decided to go back to the Hunter, I’ve latched onto your mod comp merely because it’s been so long since I’ve played a Hunter at a high level that I’d go see what a passionate Hunter uses these days in terms of mods/UI design.

    That’s where you come in.

    One of the things I never considered, really, was hiding button bars like you do. Since I key bind almost everything, it makes sense and would drastically clean up clutter. I’ve used hidden button bars, but never with class powers on them, and as the game has gotten older, the number of buttons has become cumbersome. So that’s one idea I love. I prefer your more minimal unit frame mod also, I’ve long used Xperl because of it’s relative ease of configuration (as compared to Pitbull4, which I used prior), but Xperl contains a lot of things I do not need.

    Satrina’s shortcoming at the moment is you cannot click buffs/debuffs off yet, as they’re not in secure frames yet. Hopefully that is fixed soon.

    Reply
  4. I’ve been playing WoW since the beginning, and have always been very big on customizing my UI to be clean/neat and only contain useful information, esp focused information where I don’t have to move my eyes around too much to know what’s going on. I play on the same setup you play on (hardware wise), however, my current UI is designed around Paladin’s (holy/ret). It’s been a long time since I’ve decided to redesign my UI (that time has come) and with the impending release of Cataclysm, I’ve mulled over the resurrection of my Hunter, which I played up until the release of ICC. Your design has convinced me to not only bring my Hunter back from the dead, but to give your UI a shot, only I’ll undoubtedly further customize it, as I don’t think I can live with just 1 chat window. 🙂 That said, the redesign will give me a chance to clean up a lot of overkill mods I’ve collected over the many months, which are merely over flooding information at this point. I can’t wait to see your final product…which I will undoubtedly steal, cut with a scalpel and re-customize. 🙂

    Reply
    • I’m just about done with it… in fact, I am more or less finished. I just need to run a few instances and maybe a raid before I put it out there, making sure there aren’t any possible problems, etc.

      I’d love to see how you further customize it. If you end up downloading it and liking it, be sure to send me a screenshot or two of how you’ve changed things to suit you. 🙂

      Also, I’ve configured this one to be a bit smaller, allowing for more room to play with at the bottom. You could pretty easily narrow up the chat, recount and omen windows; along with the raid frames. That would probably be enough space for an additional chat window.

      Reply
    • No, since in addition to Core Hounds, Shamans and Mages also have this ability. It can only be used once as the debuff it gives (which doesn’t allow you to benefit from the effect again) lasts quite a long time.

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  5. New here, but im loving the site, the Gar UI<cant wait, thxz for all the hard work u put into it. Keep up the GREAT work 😀 oh btw u ROCK!. once again Thxz

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  6. The new set up looks great. Thanks for mentioning the Speed Potion buff, I have not been using it, but will now! Also, what is the heroism buff? I have been searching on wowhead to no avail. Any help would be great.

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    • Heroism is the buff the Ally get when bloodlust (or their equivalent) is used. Horde, or course call it Bloodlust, and once we’re all 85 Mages will have Time Warp, and don’t forget Core Hounds can do this now as well, generally though it is all the same buff

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  7. I love the work you have put into this, I would really like to see a 4.0.1/cata proof GarUI, I JUST finished the final touches on my ui and uploading it to wowuigallery and then my wow crashed and I lost EVERYTHING, looking to make the old garui 4.0.1 compatible if anyone can help me with this i’d be very thankful, as I dont have the willpower to remake my old UI right now.

    Reply
  8. This looks good! I’m glad you went back to refining your older powerauras setup, and some of the other things you’re working on for PVP sound great.
    A request: Can you add in a Bestial Wrath aura with a timer? I find it’s really important to know how much longer you have for the 1/2 focus abilities.

    Thanks for all the work!

    Reply
    • Pretty much… I respecced SV to play around with it some for PvE, but haven’t had any opportunities to really try it yet. All I’ve been doing is PvP’ing as a Beast Master, working on making this UI a thing of awesomeness – trying at least.

      Short answer… yes, BM has been where it’s at for me. 😉

      Reply
  9. Ahh! It’s so pretty! I totally want your new power auras and what it is you do with your raid frames. Everything fits perfectly! Can’t wait for the upload. 🙂

    Reply

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